Trackback (Johnchow.com) : How not to get rich on the Internet

Today I was asked by two friends to accompany them to an “Internet Marketing Workshop” to give my opinion on what they taught. This was an all day workshop put on by storesonline.com. Had I known that was the company putting on the workshop I could have done a Google on it and saved us a lot of time but my friends didn’t know who they were so we went and checked it out. We didn’t have anything to do anyway and there was lunch included.

The event was held at the Hyatt Regency hotel in downtown Vancouver. There were over 200 people signed up for this workshop. Unlike me, most of them were here because they attended an earlier 90 minute free workshop and were told that in order to get the full picture they need to spend $20 and attend this full day workshop. I did some mental calculation in my head – 200 people times $20 = $4,000.00. Not bad at all.

Now I don’t have any problems paying $20 for an all day workshop, if the workshop was good. However, this wasn’t really a workshop at all. This was a nicely disguise internet marketing scam. Storesonline.com didn’t teach anything that you can’t find for free with a bit of Googling. What they offer was to set you up with your own online store and help you make money from it. Again, there really isn’t anything wrong with this, if you get value for your money. However, this is not the case.